Monday, May 15, 2006

On this week's season-ending closing episode of Real Time with Bill Maher, Bill took President Bush pretty well square on. Most particularly, "breaking the law is not cute." HBO doesn't have the transcript or the video available on its web site, yet, and the only transcript I found on the web was from a Swedish blogger, and Jag talar inte schweiziskt. (Den min svävfarkosten fylls med ålar.)

Now, this is our last show of the season, and I'm rather proud that we've gone all 13 weeks without once making George Bush the subject of our show-ending editorial, because I didn't want to start sounding like a broken record — or, to you kids, a degraded MP3 file. Oh, there may have been a stray George Bush punchline here and there, but, c'mon, I am a comedian and he is a retard. But fuck it, this is our last show for a while, and I just want to say that when we come back on August 25th, the week of Bill Clinton's 60th birthday, and a great time for him to do the show — your move, Mr. President. But when we come back, I hope we're only months away from the beginning of impeachment proceedings — but not for what you think. Of course, there is a laundry list of valid reasons for impeaching this President, but George Bush and his nest of vipers don't deserve to be impeached with dignity, for transgressions involving lofty affairs of state, they deserve the far worse fate that Clinton got: being impeached for absolutely nothing at all.

That's why I want to impeach Bush over the fact that he lied about that fish. He said he caught a perch twice as large as any perch that's ever been caught, and that's a lie about a fish — in a time of war. And if he will lie about a fish, then something something something what do we tell the children? What do we tell Mrs. Paul? That perch was as American as a McDonald's fish sandwich, assuming for the sake of argument that a McDonald's fish sandwich contained fish. So, Mr. President, don't laugh at yourself, because breaking the law is not cute. Having Americans torture people isn't adorable. Leaving poor people to drown wasn't enchanting, and WMD's wasn't a shaggy-dog story. So, I'll make a deal with you: we won't impeach you if you just stay on your estate — I mean ranch — and fish on your man-made lake, for perch. Maybe you'll beat your own record. But for the next 3 years, just don't touch anything. I was wrong when I criticized you for taking too much vacation — it couldn't be more the reverse. Take all the me days you want. But if you get any big ideas and try to do something, like go to Mars, or put the Ten Commandments on the flag, or turn the ports over to the Amish, then we're going to have to put you in the only place we can be sure we can be safe from you, and it looks like this: [David Blaine's water bubble]

You see, Mr. President, Stephen Colbert really wasn't joking when he said that you're rearranging the deck chairs on the Hindenberg, and Bill Maher really isn't joking when he says that you're stupid and dangerous. Fox News personality Bill Gibson was on earlier in the show, and he, like so many apologists for the President, really just doesn't get it: we're not kidding when we say that we believe that President Bush is the #1 threat facing the United States of America today, and we're not crazy, either. We're absolutely serious, and we are coming at you from the heart of the reality-based community.